[quote]pushharder wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
And back to the issue at hand:
I’m divided on the merits and morality of dropping the bomb. But two things should be borne in mind:
- Eisenhower, who was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and then president (maybe the best of the twentieth century), felt the use of the atomic bomb was unnecessary:
"…in [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
“During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…”
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
Admiral Leahy and General MacArthur both felt the same way.
- For all the idiotic talk about “beating the mean out of them,” even AFTER the atomic bombs Japan did not surrender unconditionally! The emperor remained in place, and as others have posted here, Japan still largely whitewashes its history and refuses to admit its crimes, especially in China and Korea. Drop the demand for unconditional surrender, and it seems likely that we would have come to a negotiated peace without killing another quarter of a million civilians.
As for the Germans, speaking as a former dual-citizen, the Holocaust had a lot more to do with Germany’s post-WWII aversion to war than defeat on the battlefield, or the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in air attacks.
And for those of you arguing that there is no such thing as a war crime, by that logic you don’t have any kind of a leg to stand on in denouncing terrorism or even 9/11. If targeting civilians is legit when we do it, it’s legit when they do it. Pretty simple.
The emperor remained in place because the U.S. specifically allowed it not because Japan placed it as a condition at time of surrender. We had key reasons for doing so. Read your history books.
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I’m aware of that. That’s a different issue. I’m referring to the fact that the status of the emperor was left ambiguous when the Japanese surrendered.
Not what I wrote. I wrote that it’s tough to buy the idea that we “beat the mean” out of the Japanese when they still defend a false, nationalist version of the past.
Take your own advice. The Japanese were already putting out peace feelers that summer. I’m not saying it would have happened. A lot depended on palace politics. But you ignore the possibility.
It’s in pretty clear English I think. World War I? Bombing of civilians was minimal, what are you talking about? I am saying German shame about the Holocaust has a lot more to do with the death of German militarism than the fact that the Allies defeated the Wehrmacht and killed 500,000 Germans in bombing raids. Again, I don’t buy the idea that we had to kill civilians by the hundreds of thousand to teach our enemy never to fight again.
Yeah, believing in any kind of moral principles in wartime is absolutely insane.
[quote]
I did find your Ike quote interesting. I had forgotten he had that view. My response to that would be that four years of fighting Caucasians might have clouded his judgment when it came to dealing with the Japanese mindset.[/quote]
MacArthur and Leahy, who I mentioned above, had not spent the war “fighting Caucasians.”